St. Louis Recap

Relax, sit back and enjoy...this is a long post.

We headed out last Friday morning and after some nasty weather along I-55 made it into sunny St. Louis. We decided to head to Grants Farm only to arrive and find that it was closed due to weather that had moved in earlier in the day so we went with plan B, which was the Magic House and thank goodness we did, because it was a huge hit with Emma. They have a great area for kids ages 1-6 that includes a water table and sandbox. Emma enjoyed every minute and demonstrated that she has no fear of heights as she climbed around and explored. After we left the Magic House, we went in search of some food and found out that Emma can turn into a little bear if not fed "on time". Once they brought out her dinner, Emma ate like I have never seen her eat before especially at a restaurant where she is usually distracted by the other diners.

We woke up Saturday morning and got ready to head to the zoo. The first animals that Emma saw at the zoo were the grizzly bears and they elicited a huge smile and a "what's that?". After seeing the penguin feeding, we decided to head over to the carousel. Emma did great for about the first three rotations and then the next time that I saw Brad and Emma, she was crying her little eyes out. Fortunately the ride was almost over but that was definitely the end of the carousel for the day. By this point, Emma was starting to come a little unglued so we looked at the apes and then found some lunch. Thankfully the lunch bolstered her spirits a bit and we enjoyed a few more hours at the zoo before heading back to the hotel for a nap. She barely made it out of the zoo parking lot before crashing. By far the hit of the zoo was petting the goats in the children's zoo. After dinner Saturday night, we headed to the indoor pool at the hotel. Emma was very wary but it has been almost a year since she was in a big pool so she and I sat on the steps for a while and before you know it, the legs were dangling in the water. Then Brad took her and got her focused on getting the ball at the other end of the pool and next thing you know, she was waist deep. By the time we got out, I was able to hold her away from my body and she had her legs out and was kicking.

So the clock in our hotel room had never been reset after daylight savings ended, which we were aware of most of the weekend. Well, Sunday morning I totally forgot so we awoke and thought it was an hour later than it really was. We got ourselves together, packed up and headed off to Grants farm, which opened at 9:30 am. On the way there, Brad looked at the clock and realized that it was really only about 8:15 am. OOPS! We ended up driving downtown real quick and then headed back to Grants Farm. Emma really enjoyed the ride on the tram around the park looking at all the animals. Then, she and I gave one of the baby goats a bottle. It went great until one of them bit her on the finger and she became the first patient of the day at the First Aid. After we got her bandaged, we found a turtle, which was nice and slow and non-threatening. He brought Emma back out of her shell and she had a great time after that especially when it came to feeding the llamas who were so gentle. We had to feed them four times and while we have seen Emma do some signs every now and then, she was really pulling out the "more" sign when it came to feeding the llamas.

Finally, before we headed out of town, we introduced Emma to Ted Drewes frozen custard. Before she even had the first bite swallowed, she was signing for more. She and I also got a pink carnation from Mr. Drewe himself in honor of Mother's Day! From there it was back to our rain soaked home. We had a great trip and especially enjoyed the nice, sunny weather.